Anyone who can't stomach hearing through an argument because it begins outside of his dogma is him or herself pure deliberative poison (or a troll).

And who are you to make categorical statements about what nature is or isn't? How do you justify resorting to "nature" to justify shutting down debate? Do you know what company using that tactic puts you in?

EDIT: Also, I'm curious where you see violence coming in? At least violence in a different sense from the violence that is required to enforce the inequality of the current system. Note, for example, that the coercive state apparatus in most socially democratic countries is minuscule compared to what exists in the US or Britain.

Also, equality is not the end that Judt is arguing for. Equality for equality's sake is as dumb a concept as freedom for freedom's sake. Reasonable equality in certain important respects is a precondition for the kind of social solidarity and good faith that allows a society to author its own laws, and its members to author their own lives in ways that they can be reconciled with. To Judt, it's alarming that this preconditional equality has been so thuroughly undermined especially in the US and Britain.

Anyone who can't stomach hearing through an argument because it begins outside of his dogma is him or herself pure deliberative poison (or a troll).

No, the argument of equality begins outside objective reality itself. It tries to alter reality to fit the irrational dogma of the alleged merits of equality. Equality is the "dogma", not inequality.

Unless you can prove that humans are equal in reality, then I am on the right side of this debate in saying that trying to go against nature is not a virtue, as you seem to believe it is.

And who are you to make categorical statements about what nature is or isn't?

Anytime anyone asks this question, I shake my head in disgust, because it presumes that an individual is not capable of understanding anything about anything. As a human, I am capable of making statements about the natural world. I have researched the natural world, and I have come to the conclusion that individuals are not equal, neither in talent and ability, nor in happenstance of where they are located on the heterogeneous planet Earth, and thus how economically productive they are able to be vis a vis the natural world of scarce resources.

How do you justify resorting to "nature" to justify shutting down debate?

The same way I resort to nature to justify shutting down debates over the evil eye, flat Earth, God, and other nonsensical beliefs that are counter to reality.

Do you know what company using that tactic puts you in?

I could care less what you believe company I belong to. I am only interested in truth, not what people I don't care about think of me.

Also, I'm curious where you see violence coming in?

The only way that you can ensure that equality is manifested, that is, an untalented and unproductive person is "equal" to a talented and productive person, is if and only if violence is used to take wealth away from the productive person and given to the unproductive person.

Note, for example, that the coercive state apparatus in most socially democratic countries is minuscule compared to what exists in the US or Britain.

One of the unfortunate side effects of market oriented statist societies like the US and Britain is that the more productive the society becomes, the more wealth governments have to redistribute to both themselves and others, and thus the larger the governments can get without choking off economic growth.

If any "social democracy" in Europe were to adopt a government the size of Britain or the US, the economies would completely collapse.

Having said all this, I would much rather prefer to FOCUS this debate on the alleged merits of equality, which is what your original article is all about. You are trying to make this personal. I don't want to make this personal.

So how about instead of trying to make this personal, why don't you instead make an actual argument? Do you believe that humans are equal? If not, then you bloody agree with me, and you too would be arrogant in making claims about "nature". Why do you believe that there are merits in equality? What it is about equality that is so appealing to you?

See, I have already read all about the philosophy of equality and what underlies it as a seemingly valid doctrine. The belief in equality is based on superstitious views of reality. It is based on the belief that "the good" is unity, homogeneity, constancy, in essence, it is the desire to turn reality from seeming chaos into a homogeneous, and unchanging static permanence. It is a rejection of reality itself because reality is not homogeneous, nor unchanging, nor static.

Human life is heterogeneous. We are all individuals, completely separate, different, varied, complex, and constantly changing.

As such, it should not be a surprise to see economic inequality in the populace.

I am not about to drop everything I know just because some guy on his deathbed is espousing incorrect dogma. People who are dying are not ipso facto correct in everything they say. Only people who are already dishonest and deceiving themselves would claim that those who are dying are espousing correct doctrines because they have nothing to lose. That is a terrible thought about humanity. Actually it makes sense coming from those who want equality however, because they view non-existence, i.e. static, unchanging homogeneity, as superior to existence, i.e. dynamic, changing heterogeneity, and thus the closer one is to non-existence, i.e. death, the closer to ultimate truth they become, and thus the more weight do their statements allegedly carry.

In case you were wondering, I am perfectly capable of "stomaching" arguments for equality. But my mind rejects it because it is counter to reality.

Man are there are ever a lot of epistemological problems with your position. Rather than take them one by one I'll acknowledge the key validity of one of your points:

Human life is heterogeneous. We are all individuals, completely separate, different, varied, complex, and constantly changing.

Absolutely, 100% right. But equality to any leftist doesn't mean equivalence. What I would dispute is the implication that there's some kind of natural rational hierarchy between these different things. The hierarchy is as much of an artificial (Edit: and coercive) imposition by the economic system as is whatever equality is created by it.

The point is that, if we're not going to be defined by economics, if instead the economic system is going to, as much as possible, serve the meaningful ends that we determine for ourselves as members of a larger social discourse, some level of equality that is far more pronounced than what currently exists in countries like the US and the UK, is key.

(At work and need not to cut this short for now, unfortunately. But I'll be back later).

EDIT: PS - I appreciate the consistency of your saying that you don't want to make this personal, and yet ending with "You can't stomach reality. I can." Kudos.

EDIT 2: What economic equality (or any systemically enforced equality of power) allows, is for heterogeneity to persist; to not be quashed by the homogenizing forces of, for example, the culture industry.

Man are there are ever a lot of epistemological problems with your position.

Actually it is your position that has the epistemological problems. I can tell because you accuse me of making epistemological errors, and yet you do not show exactly where I allegedly made them. This leads me to believe that you actually do not understand what epistemology actually means.

When they are not pressed, that is exactly what they mean. Equality, equivalence, any word that starts with "equi" are derived from the latin "A equi", which means, naturally, equal.

What I would dispute is the implication that there's some kind of natural rational hierarchy between these different things.

Your dispute is irrational, because there are in fact natural differences between humans. I cannot run as fast as Usain Bolt because we are naturally different with respect to running. I cannot run a company like Bill Gates can because we are naturally different with respect to entrepreneurship. This principle of natural differences holds true for the entire human race.

The hierarchy is as much of an artificial imposition by the economic system as is whatever equality is created by it.

It depends on what "economic system" you are talking about. If the economic system is free trade and hence open and full competition in any line of business, then economic equality will be a result of human inequality, insofar as the domain is free trade and economic competition.

There is only an "artificial" imposition of inequality when there is violence present. From petty thieves to the government, violence can be used to take from some and given to others. This creates an artificial inequality, because the source of the inequality is not natural, i.e. the naturally occurring inequality among humans.

The point is that, if we're not going to be defined by economics, if instead the economic system is going to, as much as possible, serve the meaningful ends that we determine for ourselves as members of a larger social discourse, some level of equality that is far more pronounced than what currently exists in countries like the US and the UK, is key.

This is an unintelligible and desperate attempt at justifying equality on the crude premise that equality is a priori justified.

This is an unintelligible and desperate attempt at justifying equality on the crude premise that equality is a priori justified.

Just because you've been drinking kool-aid for so long you don't understand the value of orange juice, that doesn't make its value unintelligible. Just unintelligible to you.

Let's examine your Ussain Bolt example for a second:

I cannot run as fast as Usain Bolt because we are naturally different with respect to running.

Fine. But on what basis do you extrapolate from Ussain Bolt being better at running, that he is "better" in any other, more abstract sense? Why is it better to be a better runner? Why should being a better runner be so much more handsomely rewarded than being a better, for example, poet? Or politician? Why should it be less handsomely rewarded than being a great software CEO? Or less than being an heiress to a hotel fortune?

I'm not saying that there isn't some criteria that we could use to determine how to valuate peoples' contributions to society, but let's not fall into the bullshit of rationalizing the justice or reasonableness of the criteria imposed by the market.

What's at the root of Judt's advocacy for equality, is that for us to, as a society, determine how these things ought to be systematically valuated in any kind of rational sense, we need a vibrant debate in which people can participate with as little fear of coercion (economic or otherwise) as possible. Fear of economic coercion warps people's positions away from where they would need to be to be able to engage the social discourse actively. Instead they're reduced to responding reactively, and in such a way as to preserve their survival. Do you see that difference? Between talking about how society should be structured to provide for survival, versus talking about how society should be structured to provide for a real sense of actualization in accordance with reason?

His argument, which I buy, is that we are moving away from a society that facilitates a rational engagement across social difference, in that large swaths of society are so effectively disempowered by systemically imposed economic inequality.

I would also note that your position is irrational in that it fails to acknowledge change (historical / personal / etc.). There's a reason why Ussain Bolt is a faster runner than you that is not purely natural. There's a natural prerequisite that there, for sure. But he could just as easily have decided that he'd rather eat McDonald's and play video games as a child, than train. He could have just as easily have had parents that didn't support him in his training. If Ussain Bolt had decided to become a fatass, and you, rather than devoting yourself to reading Hayek (or whatever it is that you did instead), had devoted yourself to training, who knows who would be faster?

The significance of this is that nature is all well and good, but who people become is based on personal opinions, and these personal opinions are informed by where a person is situated in society. In terms of politics, there are places in society that provide the space necessary for critical (self-)reflection. There are others that don't. Too many that don't.

You follow me?

Apparently I can't post for another 7 minutes, so one more response:

When they are not pressed, that is exactly what they mean.

If you want to argue with the lowest denominator of egalitarians, then maybe that's true. Stupid people warp egalitarianism as much as stupid people warp libertarianism. But no philosophically serious advocate for egalitarianism would argue for anything but the opposite.

This is probably my biggest problem with the libertarian attitude. It assumes that its opponents have somehow failed to grasp what it recognizes as its profoundly simple axioms. That they must therefore be complete idiots. Libertarian's philosophical position, I'll tell you, has been in the discourse for ages, and has been slapped down again and again throughout the history of the western tradition. It pops up again and again, completely oblivious to its status as a recurrence, because it has no regard or interest, or philosophical space, to acknowledge the existence, let alone the significance of history.

Just because you've been drinking kool-aid for so long you don't understand the value of orange juice, that doesn't make its value unintelligible. Just unintelligible to you.

I haven't been drinking any Kool-Aid. You have. You are the one who accepts irrational philosophies as if they are valid.

Let's examine your Ussain Bolt example for a second:

I cannot run as fast as Usain Bolt because we are naturally different with respect to running.

Fine. But on what basis do you extrapolate from Ussain Bolt being better at running, that he is "better" in any other, more abstract sense?

I never extrapolated such a belief. There is no such thing as one person being better than another "in the abstract". I said that people are different, which means that some people are more productive than others in a free, competitive economy.

Why is it better to be a better runner?

Ask Usain Bolt.

Why should being a better runner be so much more handsomely rewarded than being a better, for example, poet? Or politician? Why should it be less handsomely rewarded than being a great software CEO? Or less than being an heiress to a hotel fortune?

You obviously have not read enough. The reason why a sprinter is more "rewarded" than a poet is because value is subjective. The consumers have enabled this payment scheme. The consumers are willing to pay more money to watch Usain Bolt run than they are for additional poetry.

I'm not saying that there isn't some criteria that we could use to determine how to valuate peoples' contributions to society, but let's not fall into the bullshit of rationalizing the justice or reasonableness of the criteria imposed by the market.

The market does not "impose" anything. The market is a process of voluntary trade among individuals, each of whom have a different value scale that is manifested by paying more money for certain goods and services, versus other goods and services.

Your beliefs are bullshit if you deny the validity of the choices and values of other consumer because it doesn't gel with your own personal choices and values. That is the starting point, the seed, for tyranny. It is the fallacious and arrogant assertion that your personal subjective values are somehow more valid and more optimal for other people than their own personal subjective values.

Your values are your values and other people's values are other people's values. If others are willing to pay more money to watch Usain Bolt run than they are willing to pay poets for their poetry, then you have no fucking right to impose your own subjective beliefs on them and eradicate their values so that they share your values.

Everyone is different, so treat them that way. See, this is another problem with holding equality as a valid philosophy. It makes you a fucking douchebag anti-social tyrant wannabe. You cling to your false views of reality, and then when reality does not operate according to your false views, you lash out and question and attack other people's values as if yours are more important than theirs. This is why believing in a homogeneous and static society is so dangerous and destructive. It is what gives people the pretentious and conceited justification that their attacks against others is justified.

What's at the root of Judt's advocacy for equality, is that for us to, as a society, determine how these things ought to be systematically valuated in any kind of rational sense, we need a vibrant debate in which people can participate with as little fear of coercion (economic or otherwise) as possible.

Excuse me, but value is subjective at the individual level. There is no such thing as a "systematic" "valuation in a rational sense". That is just you taking your subjective values and dressing them up to be more important than they really are, so that you can impose them on others as if your values are more optimal than other people's values, because your subjective values carry the incredibly pompous belief of being more "systematically rational".

Fear of economic coercion warps people's positions away from where they would need to be to be able to engage the social discourse actively.

Fear and coercion are exactly what underlies the belief in wanting equality. The fear is not being able to become as wealthy as others, or being attacked by poor people who can't acquire wealth from taxation so they go out and tax people directly. The coercion is engaging in violence against the more productive and taking their wealth and giving it to the less productive because the less productive can't do what the more productive do.

Instead they're reduced to responding reactively, and in such a way as to preserve their survival.

The reactionaries are those who react to the reality that individuals are not equal and they refuse to deal with that reality so they become aggressive in order to solve their problems.

Between talking about how society should be structured to provide for survival, versus talking about how society should be structured to provide for a real sense of actualization in accordance with reason?

Oh, you mean you want society structured according to your personal subjective value scale? You want to take money away from Usain Bolt and give the loot to poets, because you personally view poetry as more valuable than track and field sports, and you just can't stand that the reality of other people in the world and their subjective value scales does not match your own? Oh my God, are you actually saying that because other people don't agree with your values, that there is something wrong with them? Typical rantings of a tyrant wannabe.

His argument, which I buy, is that we are moving away from a society that facilitates a rational engagement across social difference, in that large swaths of society are so effectively disempowered by systemically imposed economic inequality.

Blah blah blah. More unintelligible meanderings. In the market economy, there is a maximum amount of "engagement across social difference". It's called the law of comparative advantage. It shows that everyone has a place in the market economy and can make net gains by participating in the division of labor. No matter how poor or downtrodden people are, they can effectively compete with the wealthy and upscale by focusing their efforts on producing that of which they have a relative comparative advantage.

Furthermore, you keep throwing around the word "rational" as if it were not an individual-based trait, when in reality it is.

I would also note that your position is irrational in that it fails to acknowledge change (historical / personal / etc.).

Stop lying. I have made myself quite clear that reality is all about change. If you doubt this, then read my prior post again. I quite clearly said that reality is not static, it is constantly changing.

There's a reason why Ussain Bolt is a faster runner than you that is not purely natural.

Yes, it is purely natural. He is naturally a faster runner than I am. He can run faster than me unaided by any "unnatural" mechanism.

But he could just as easily have decided that he'd rather eat McDonald's and play video games as a child, than train.

If this is what you call an attempt at a refutation that people are naturally different, then you obviously have no clue what the hell you are talking about.

He could have just as easily have had parents that didn't support him in his training.

That world does not exist. The only world that exists is the one that exists. That world that exists has differences across individuals.

If Ussain Bolt had decided to become a fatass, and you, rather than devoting yourself to reading Hayek (or whatever it is that you did instead), had devoted yourself to training, who knows who would be faster?

That world does not exist.

The significance of this is that nature is all well and good, but who people become is based on personal opinions, and these personal opinions are informed by where a person is situated in society.

Which means that the current generation are benefited if they inherit wealth that was produced from prior generations. Free markets maximize wealth generation and competition always ensures that those who are most fit to use a particular set of means of production, end up owning and controlling them.

In terms of politics, there are places in society that provide the space necessary for critical (self-)reflection. There are others that don't. Too many that don't.

You follow me?

I follow you, but you are completely wrong.

If you want to argue with the lowest denominator of egalitarians, then maybe that's true. Stupid people warp egalitarianism as much as stupid people warp libertarianism. But no philosophically serious advocate for egalitarianism would argue for anything but the opposite.

If you are not for equality, then you are for inequality. You can't be an advocate of equality but not an advocate of equality. It's one or the other.

This is probably my biggest problem with the libertarian attitude.

The problem is not libertarian attitude. The problem is your views on reality. Those irrational views are shaping your beliefs and your incredible resentment and rejection of reality is causing you to impose your subjective values on other people who have different values.

It assumes that its opponents have somehow failed to grasp what it recognizes as its profoundly simple axioms.

That individuals have separate value scales is an axiom.

That they must therefore be complete idiots.

So you can't take being called an idiot? Muffin. Grow a pair will ya?

Libertarian's philosophical position, I'll tell you, has been in the discourse for ages, and has been slapped down again and again throughout the history of the western tradition.

Libertarianism has been the most oppressed and ignored philosophical position for ages. It is an extremely new philosophy, it has only come into existence on a grand scale in the last couple hundred years. For tens of thousands of years, STATISM was the dominant philosophy, and that was imposed on people.

It pops up again and again, completely oblivious to its status as a recurrence, because it has no regard or interest, or philosophical space, to acknowledge the existence, let alone the significance of history.

False. Libertarianism is a philosophy that recognizes the facts of human life as it is, and thus how to most benefit the human race. Libertarianism is essentially a single idea: Do not initiate violence against other people.

If you reject libertarianism, then you reject that fundamental idea, which means you hold that initiating violence against people is justified. If you believe that violence is justified, then you hold reason itself to be worthless, and thus all of science and everything humans can accomplish, because initiating violence against other people is a negation of their reason.

You can't possibly talk about reason and rationality if you advocate for violence and thus the absence of reason and rationality.

My biggest problem with statists is that you fallaciously believe that initiating violence can solve whatever social problems you perceive, and the tragedy is that your beliefs are irrational, such as wanting equality for everyone. That's how initiating violence against productive people so that less productive people can have more becomes justified. It is a completely anti-social ideology.

I'll get back to you in the morning (just got in and need to go to bed). I will say that to say that if you reject libertarianism than you reject the fundamental idea that you do not initiate violence against other people is a clear logical fallacy. Does rejecting Christianity imply that you reject the golden rule? Does rejecting Fascism imply that you reject the idea of kinship bonds? Do you need me to tell you the answer is no?

As to "not reading enough," I would pit my library against yours any day of the week. Come on. Unzip your pants. We'll get a ruler.

Get back to you in more substance tomorrow.

EDIT: You know who you sound like, btw? The zealot ideologues guarding every other totalizing dogma. It's so ironic that libertarianism thinks of itself as maximizing personal freedom, and yet enforces such an inflexibly infallibilist orthodoxy defining what ideas count as being in touch with "reality" and what ideas are "irrational." It also evidently shares with every other totalizing dogma a persecution complex ("Libertarianism has been the most oppressed and ignored philosophical position for ages." If that was true, I'm sure all the violinists in the world would be playing for libertarianism right now). And as a further note, stop expecting me to defend the caricaturized positions you've defined for me (i.e., that I supposedly deny heterogeneity). Either make the effort to actually read what I'm writing with half a grain of respect (by which I mean, even the slightest acknowledgement to yourself that you could be wrong to think everyone but your coterie of true believers is a fucking lying knuckle dragger), or gtfo. Ask yourself, what motivation do I have to "lie" to you? Not everyone is the bully who hassled you in the school yard for being a geek. Most of us, in fact, would rather engage with you in good faith.

I will say that to say that if you reject libertarianism than you reject the fundamental idea that you do not initiate violence against other people is a clear logical fallacy.

No, it isn't, because libertarianism is characterized by the non-aggression principle. That is the fundamental libertarian proposition. To be against libertarianism is to be against the non-aggression principle.

Does rejecting Christianity imply that you reject the golden rule?

The Golden Rule is not a fundamental aspect of Christianity. The fundamental aspect of Christianity is the belief in Christ as savior.

Does rejecting Fascism imply that you reject the idea of kinship bonds?

Kinship bonds is not the fundamental aspect of Fascism. The fundamental characteristics of Fascism is government control of the means of production.

Do you need me to tell you the answer is no?

Your questions convey a horrible understanding of the subject matter.

As to "not reading enough," I would pit my library against yours any day of the week. Come on. Unzip your pants. We'll get a ruler. Get back to you in more substance tomorrow.

Considering your ignorance, I guarantee that my book collection is larger than yours.

EDIT: You know who you sound like, btw? The zealot ideologues guarding every other totalizing dogma.

No more, no less than atheist biologists who won't budge from their advocacy of evolution.

It's so ironic that libertarianism thinks of itself as maximizing personal freedom, and yet enforces such an inflexibly infallibilist orthodoxy defining what ideas count as being in touch with "reality" and what ideas are "irrational."

Libertarianism does not "enforce" anything in the positive sense. It is primarily a system of what people should not do, e.g. murder, rape, theft, etc.

I think you have a problem with consistency. You wish that libertarianism was about betraying principles for the sake of expediency. If libertarians did that, then they would be liberals, conservatives, or other contradictory paradigms.

It also evidently shares with every other totalizing dogma a persecution complex ("Libertarianism has been the most oppressed and ignored philosophical position for ages." If that was true, I'm sure all the violinists in the world would be playing for libertarianism right now).

If you knew your history, you would have known the obvious truth that individual liberty has been persecuted for tens of thousands of years, and has only been prevalent around the world in the last couple hundred years.

And as a further note, stop expecting me to defend the caricaturized positions you've defined for me (i.e., that I supposedly deny heterogeneity).

It is not supposedly. It is implied in your desire to eradicate it as if it were "artificial", and not natural. I am not saying that you deny that heterogeneity exists, I am saying that you deny that natural heterogeneity exists.

Either make the effort to actually read what I'm writing with half a grain of respect (by which I mean, even the slightest acknowledgement to yourself that you could be wrong to think everyone but your coterie of true believers is a fucking lying knuckle dragger), or gtfo.

One as ignorant and stupid as you deserves no respect. You must earn it. If you want respect, then please stop being a fucking idiot.

Ask yourself, what motivation do I have to "lie" to you?

You are not lying to me so much as you are lying to yourself. You are lying to yourself because you lack the self-esteem to face reality as it is, no matter what consequences that has on your prejudices and biases.

Not everyone is the bully who hassled you in the school yard for being a geek.

???

Most of us, in fact, would rather engage with you in good faith.

I am debating in good faith. I am being as honest as I can. If you want to be told "good job", or "atta boy", then hire a prostitute. I am not here to sanction stupidity.

You are a caricature of yourself. Get off of Reddit for a while. You need the fresh air. I think you could also use a hug.

While we're talking about book lists: Read Nietzsche on why the "core libertarian proposition" is self-deluding mysticism. Read Strauss on why its ultimately self-defeating. Read Webber, Horkheimer, Adorno and Marcuse on why the libertarian faith in the justice of the market is absurd. And read Habermas on how to conduct yourself in a debate (you can't debate anyone if you start with the assumption that anyone who disagrees with you is stupid, if that's your starting point you're completely argumentatively inaccessible).

Also, equality is not the end that Judt is arguing for. Equality for equality's sake is as dumb a concept as freedom for freedom's sake. Reasonable equality in certain important respects is a precondition for the kind of social solidarity and good faith that allows a society to author its own laws, and its members to author their own lives in ways that they can be reconciled with. To Judt, it's alarming that this preconditional equality has been so thuroughly undermined especially in the US and Britain.

You edited your post with this after I already responded. That is bad reddiquette.

I was writing it as you were responding. Hadn't realized you had responded when I posted the edit. Anyway, if it wasn't clear that it was contained within the "Edit" started with the beginning of the paragraph before, I apologize. I look forward to you demonizing me for this gesture as well.

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